
GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR 



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MEMORIAL OBSERVANCES 



GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR 



CITY OF WORCESTER 



PRINTED BY ORDER OF THE 
CITY COUNCIL 



WORCESTER. MASSACHUSETTS 
MCMVIl 




I 



(foments 

George Frisbie Hoar Frontispiece 

Memorial to George Frisbie Hoar .... 5 

Order of City Council for Memorial Service 
to George Frisbie Hoar by City of Wor- 
cester 11 

Programme of Services 12 

Prayer by Rev. Edward Everett Hale . . .13 

Presentation of John W. Daniel by Mayor 

Walter H. Blodget 14 

Oration by John W. Daniel 15 

John W. Daniel opposite 15 

Benediction by Rev. Edward Everett Hale . . 33 

Resolutions by City of Worcester . . . -34 



Bnitr& *tatra Srnatar 



tBorn at (HonrurJ). fttaaH. 
August 29. 1B2G 



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CITY OF WORCESTER. 

In the City Council. 

fiUmorfal to <&tovQt iFrtefife 7i>oat\ 

The City of Worcester is clothed in mourning. Her heart 
beats in sorrow. 

The death of George Frisbie Hoar, which occurred at his home 
in Worcester on Friday, the thirtieth day of September, 1904, 
has caused sadness in the Commonwealth and nation, but in this 
the city of his residence, it brings a peculiar and personal grief 
to all her citizens. For more than fifty years he had lived in 
Worcester and rendered her name conspicuous and honorable by 
the preeminence which he attained. It was here that he began 
the practice of his chosen profession and rose by the fidelity, 
industry, brilliancy, breadth of vision, soundness of judgment, 
and absolute integrity which characterized his every act and 
which were a part of the mental and moral fibre of the man, to 
be, by common consent, a lawyer without an equal at the bar of 
this county, in learning, capacity and wisdom. 

The only municipal office which he ever held was that of City 
Solicitor, and he often served the city as special counsel in im- 
portant litigation, until the very last of his life. His extraor- 
dinary faculties as a lawyer were retained untarnished and 
growing more strong and powerful as the years passed by, 
although his life work widened into broader fields than those 
open to the advocate practicing before the courts. The unerring 
logic of his intellectual processes, the retentiveness of his memory, 
which suffered no fact or rule to escape from its grip, the incisive- 
ness of his mind, the profoundness and breadth of his profes- 
sional learning, adorned as it was by all the grace of classical 
and modern literature, and his instinctive grasp of fundamental 
truths and constitutional principles placed him in the foremost 
rank of the great lawyers of the country. 

He was forty-two years of age when elected in 1868 to public 
life as a member of the national House of Representatives. 
Equipped as he was with all the learning of his profession, and 
in the maturity of his great powers, he was at once welcome to 
the most important counsels of the nation and thrust into places 
of greatest responsibility. In 1877 he was elected to the Senate 
of the United States, and by successive re-elections he has been 
continued in that highest of legislative bodies until his death. 
His service to the Commonwealth and country in that exalted 



6 I iM »rge Frisbie Hoar 

office not only maintained the traditions established by Webster, 
Everett, Sumner and Wilson, but added new lustre to the glory 
of that body. 

His speeches are models of English composition, kindled into 
undying life by the pure fire of oratory. He possessed the 
courage, rare even among statesmen, which can look beyond the 
confines of party policy and dictation, to the most fundamental 
ideas of enduring national grandeur and the highest ethical 
conceptions of the progress of civilization. For more than a 
third of a century, he has wrought upon every question of far- 
reaching importance discussed in Congress and made an 
ineffaceable impress upon national legislation. 

During this long period of legislative service, he has been him- 
self an important part in the history of national progress. While 
exemplifying in his own life the highest type of statesmanship, 
he has been the confidant of presidents and the counselor of 
statesmen. Living always in the full light of a public servant, 
no suspicion ever breathed against his absolute integrity, his 
blameless life, and his character as a Christian. Tried by every 
test of manhood, he measures to the highest standard. 

He was interested in all that tended toward the advancement 
of humanity and was catholic in all his sympathies. He was the 
champion of the oppressed, the friend of the needy, and the 
helper of those in distress. His last public utterance was in one 
of the public schools of this city, and of the cause of universal 
free education he has ever been a devoted advocate. To Clark 
University, he has contributed largely of his time and wisdom 
and placed the cause of the farthest advancement of knowledge 
under lasting obligation. He was a profound student of the 
history of all ages, but especially that of his own country, which 
he has illumined by his investigations and writings. 

He traced his lineage from the early settlers of New England, 
through warriors of the Revolution and signers of the Declara- 
tion of Independence and of the Constitution, and he filled in 
fullest measure the widest sphere of opportunity and influence 
open in his own time to the highest talent in statecraft. Breath- 
ing thus the spirit of Puritan institutions, and living the life of 
an American statesman, he was the incarnation of Massachusetts. 

City Council. In Joint Convention, 

September 30, 1904. 

Unanimously passed by a rising vote. 

W. Henry Towne, Acting Clerk. 

Approved, Oct. 1st, 1904. 

Walter H. Blodget, Mayor. 

A Copy. Attest: E. H. Towne. City Clerk.' 



A Memorial 



<£ft£ Of WLOVtt&ttV 

Q&VQtTtTft That there be and is hereby created a special 
committee to consist of the President and one member of 
the Board of Aldermen and the President and two members 
of the Common Council, which committee, acting with the 
Mayor and City Solicitor, shall make arrangements for a 
suitable memorial service to commemorate the life of the 
late George Frisbie Hoar and that they be requested to 
invite some statesman of national reputation to deliver a 
public address in his memory as a part of such service. 
And be it further 

($ VXitVtQl That the Mayor be authorized to draw his orders 
for the reasonable expenses in connection with such memo- 
rial service and of the printing of the proceedings thereof, 
to be charged to the account for incidental expenses. 

(Edwin P. Crerie.) 

In Board of Aldermen, 
October 18, 1904. 

Order adopted and Alderman Crerie appointed to serve with 
the President of this Board. Sent down for concurrence. 

W. Henry Towne, 

Assistant Clerk. 

In Common Council, 
October 31, 1904. 

Concurred and Councilmen Holden and Power added to the 
committee. 

S. Hamilton Coe, 

Clerk. 
Approved, November 1, 1904. 

Walter H. Blodget, 

Mayor. 

A copy. Attest: E. H. Towne, 

City Clerk. 



at Jfflecfjantcs Hall, 
patriots' ©ap, 
gprtl 19, 1905. 



memorial Sertofce to George ffvittitit J%ouv 
Eg t%t <£Ug of WLotttttttv 

patriots' Dai) 
Xfnrtren ©tm&rtt! iFito 

GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR 
Born at Concord, Mass., August 29, 1826. 
Died at Worcester, Mass., September 30, 1904. 

"He had the noble public spirit of his day, to which no duty 
seemed trifling- or obscure." 

(Marietta Oration.) 

" During all this time, having a large share in controlling vast 
public expenditure, in shaping the policies which make vast per- 
sonal fortunes, which create towns and cities and states, and 
make them grow, he has kept his hands clean, his integrity 
unsullied, his way of life modest and frugal — 

The action faithful, and the honor clear." 

(Oration on American Citizenship.) 

"The highest love of country is developed and strengthened, 
and not weakened, by local attachment. The man who loves his 
household best is the best neighbor. The man who loves his 
household and his neighbor best is the best citizen for town or 
city. The man who loves his town or city best loves his state 
best. The man who loves his town and city and state best 
loves his country best." 

(Oration on American Citizenship.) 

"The fate of the nation depends in the last resort on individual 
character. Everything in human government, like everything 
in individual conduct, depends, in the end, upon the sense of 
duty. Whatever safeguards may be established, however com- 
plicated or well adjusted the mechanism, you come to a place 
somewhere where safety depends upon somebody having the will 
to do right, when it is in his power and may seem to be his 
interest to do wrong. When the people were considering the 
adoption of the Constitution of the United States, one of our 
wisest statesmen said that the real and only security for a repub- 



12 A Memorial 

lie is when the rulers have the same interest as the people. If 
they have not, Constitutional restraints will break down some- 
where, except for the sense of duty of the rulers." 

" All elections depend upon this principle. You may multiply 
election officers and returning boards, you may provide for an 
appeal to courts of first resort or last resort, but in the end you 
must come somewhere to a point where the sense of public duty 
is stronger than party spirit, or your election is but a sort of 
fighting:, or, if not that, a sort of cheating. The same thing is 
true of the individual voter, and of the legislator who is to elect 
the Senator, and the Governor who is to appoint the judge or 
the executive officer, and the judge who is to interpret the 
Constitution or the Statute and decide the cause, and the juror 
who is to find the fact. On these men depend the safety and the 
permanence of the republic. On these men depend life, liber- 
ty and property. And yet each of them has to make that choice. 
Each has to decide whether he will be influenced by ambition or 
by party spirit or the desire for popular favor or the fear of pop- 
ular disfavor or the love of money, on the one side, or by the 
sense of duty on the other." 

(Oration on American Citizenship.) 



JJrogramme 



Presiding Officer, Mayor Walter H. Blodget 
ORGAN PRELUDE William A. Gaylord 

"LEAD KINDLY LIGHT" Buck 

Temple Quartette of Boston 

PRAYER Edward Everett Hale 

"MISERERE" Gerrish Quartette 

ORATION 

JOHN WARWICK DANIEL 

United States Senator from Virginia 

"CROSSING THE BAR" Macy Quartette 

BENEDICTION . Edward Everett Hale 



George Frisbie Hoar 13 

JJrager t>» Hfto* IStrtoarfr IStomtt ®ale 

Will you all join with me in prayer? Let us pray. Father 
of all, Thou also art with us. That is best of all. Be our 
strength in our weakness, light of our darkness, and our director 
for to-morrow and the days that will come as Thou hast been 
with us in those days that are past. How shall we thank Thee 
for Thy goodness ? How shall we ask Thee for Thy care ? That 
Thou hast been with the patriots, with the fathers for whom this 
day is called and for whom this day is dedicated. That Thou 
art with Thy children from the beginning, to lead them across 
the water, to plant them in a desert land, and to give them 
strength. We praise Thee, Lord God of Hosts, that Thou art 
the God of everyone here, ready to lead Thy children if only 
they will walk with Thee. We do thank Thee for such gifts 
in the past, and we ask Thee to be with Thy children and Thy 
children's children in the future. 

We thank Thee for him whom we commemorate here to-day, 
Senator and patriot indeed, and himself leader of patriots. That 
Thou wert with him from the very beginning. That his infant 
lips lisped to Thee in prayer. That as he died he knew he was with 
his God. That Thy strength, Thy light, Thy blessing and Thy 
love were with him through his years. That he was here to speak 
to us the word of truth. That he was here to go and to come 
with us, the friend of the friendless, the friend of all. That 
he was here to look back upon the past and to translate its les- 
sons for the future. That he was always strong, always glad, 
always friendly, and always near to his God — nearer to Thee 
even though it were a cross that lifted him. And Thou, Lord, 
hast been pleased to call him to higher service. He prays for us 
and with us in the glad company of Thy larger world. He sees 
as he is seen. He knows as he is known — and we wait a little 
longer. Grant us to-day what he would ask for us — that we may 
know our God from the least to the greatest. That every man 
may bear his brother's burdens, and so fulfill the whole law. 
That we may live each for all, and all for each. How can we 
thank Thee for Thy blessings to the country which he served and 
loved. That Thou hast knit these people together as one, even 



14 A Memorial 

as the Lord Jesus prayed that we might be perfected in one. 
That so these states may bear each other's burdens. That so 
these states may lead each other forward in the divine way, in 
the way of righteousness. 

Father, make this land to be indeed one people, seeking Thee 
and finding Thee, and may these people consecrate their lives to 
Thy infinite sen-ice. 

So we pray for the nations of the world, that Thou will hasten 
the time when they all shall be made one. Thou with them, they 
with Thee, that this world may be a part of the kingdom of Thy 
heaven. That the sword may everywhere be sheathed, and that 
men need study war no more. Father, we ask it in the name of 
Thy Beloved Son. Amen. 

Join me all audibly in the Lord's prayer. 

Our Father which an in heaven. Hallowed be Thy name. 
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in hea- 
ven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our 
debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into tempta- 
tion, but deliver us from evil: for Thine is the kingdom, and 
the power, and the glor>\ forever. Amen. 



fHapor ZZXalttv m. ElQ&srt 

It is very fitting that we should gather here today to hold a 
service in memory of one of Worcester's greatest citizens, the 
late United States Senator George Frisbie Hoar. And it is also 
very appropriate that we should hold this service in this grand, 
old, historic hall. For he has stood upon this platform many 
times, and as he stood here there have gone forth from those 
lips words which were so powerful, words which were so 
eloquent, that the audiences within these walls were fairly spell- 
bound: yes. words which were so important that they were 
taken from this room, waved by electricity to all parts of this 
country, yes. and sent under the ocean to foreign lands, and 
were published the following morning in nearly every paper 
issued in the world. Such was the greatness of this man. This 




M \ WO\< JOM\ \\. |)\\|| I 



George Frisbie Hoar 15 

country knew him as a great scholar and statesman. Worcester 
knew him not only as a scholar and statesman, but we also knew 
him as a friend and a neighbor; yes, and best of all, we knew 
him as a noble Christian citizen, a friend to all, and everyone 
his friend. This was fully demonstrated by the immense crowd 
of people which gathered in front of City Hall on that memor- 
able day of his funeral, and as the doors swung open thousands 
upon thousands passed through that building, that they might 
take the last fond look upon their friend. When Senator Hoar 
passed to the other world, Worcester lost one of her noblest 
citizens and one of her best friends. 

We are very fortunate indeed in having with us today a man 
who knew Senator Hoar as a friend, who knew him in the 
Senate chamber, who knew him on the streets of Washington, 
yes, who knew him as a personal friend, and it gives me great 
pleasure at this time to introduce to you United States Senator 
John W. Daniel of Virginia, who will deliver the address upon 
this occasion. 



Oration fig Senator 3?otju WL. Dauirl 

OF VIRGINIA 

Mr. Mayor Blodget and Gentlemen of the City Government of 
Worcester. 

Fellow Citizens: The city of Worcester could have conferred 
upon me no higher or more congenial honor than that conveyed 
by the invitation to come into your midst and to speak to you 
in memory of your foremost and most beloved citizen, the late 
Senator George Frisbie Hoar. 

I accepted it with reverent sense of the dignity of the occasion, 
and with devout appreciation of the gentle sentiments that in- 
spired it. My task would be wholly unshadowed were it not for 
apprehensive thoughts as to my ability to portray justly the great 
and noble character of your departed friend. Even these are in 
a measure soothed when I recall that my omissions will be filled 
by your knowledge of his virtues, and that the imperfections of 
my portrayal will be more than supplied by your vivid memories 



16 A Memorial 

of his living" presence. I take courage, too, from my own knowl- 
edge of Senator Hoar. 

He was a simple man. He was, indeed, 

"As the great only are in their simplicity, sublime." 

At Washington city as here at home, he lived the simple life, 
and he loved the simple ways. He had no taste for ostentations 
or frivolities, and his earnest, honest soul could have found no 
satisfaction in "gay religions filled with pomp and gold." 

In my thoughts I have often associated him with Macaulay's 
description in his Essay on Milton of the English Puritan, "whose 
love for liberty was a part of his religion," and "who walked as 
ever in his great Taskmaster's eye." As Milton said of himself, 
so might he have said: "I am not one who has disgraced beauty 
of sentiment by deformity of conduct, nor the character of the 
freeman by the actions of the slave; but by the grace of God, I 
have kept my life unsullied." When such a man passes away, 
sorrow must come to the people as well as to the family, kindred 
and friends who dwelt within the circle of his cheering influence. 

But the day that commemorates his life is a day of triumph. 

That triumph calls for no gaudy demonstration or specious 
eulogy, and I shall be content if I may in a plain way unfold my 
conception of the man. 

The junior Senator of Massachusetts, Governor Crane, said of 
him to his colleagues in the Senate: "You all know how he loved 
his home, his State, and with what pride and affection he always 
referred to his beloved Massachusetts, and he believed that the 
man who loves his household and his kindred and his town and 
his State best, will love his country best, and his life was given 
not to his home and State alone, but to his country." Indeed 
did the Senate know this, for often by word and deed he had 
attested in their presence his affectionate regard, not only for the 
State and the people from whom he received his title as Senator, 
not only for the republic as a whole, in whose service he had 
expended more than a third of a century of toil, but as well for 
distinctive states and communities which compose its fabric, and 
for the distant and feeble peoples to whom he was bound alone 
by the instincts and sympathies of humanity. 



George Frisbie Hoar 17 

My own State of Virginia and its people were often the recip- 
ients of his friendly attention in kind actions, and in generous 
words, and I could not come to his home and forget to express 
the sentiments of gratitude and respect which they felt towards 
him living or the sorrow with which they learned that he was dead. 

The triumph of his life commingles with "Patriots' Day" — the 
day of Concord and Lexington — of which this is the 130th anni- 
versary. Its history could not be written without traversing the 
lineage of George Frisbie Hoar, and treading in his footprints. 
"My grandfather," said he, "and two great grandfathers and 
three of my father's uncles were at Concord in the Lincoln com- 
pany, of which my grandfather, Samuel Hoar, whom I well 
remember, was Lieutenant on the 19th of April, 1775." Neither 
could you pursue the story that began at Concord without reviv- 
ing his antecedents. His mother's father was Roger Sherman. 
She as a girl sat on the knees of Washington. 

Roger Sherman had the unique distinction of being the only 
American whose name was signed to all those great State papers: 

(1) The Association of 1774. 

(2) The Articles of Confederation. 

(3) The Declaration of Independence. 

(4) The Constitution of the United States. 

At Concord, too, was the birthplace of Senator Hoar; and as 
Concord throbbed in his every heart-beat until that heart was 
cold in death, so liberty bell rang in his ears until they knew 
only the realm of silence. I might say of him as Lamar said of 
Sumner: "Liberty to him was a grand, intense truth, inscribed in 
blazing letters upon the tablets of his inner conscience, to deny 
which would have been to deny that he himself existed." Can 
we wonder that liberty was the love and the dream of his life? 
"We are quotations," says the philosopher of Concord, "from 
our ancestors." 

In July, 1898, Senator Hoar was the guest of the Virginia Bar 
Association, and he delivered before them an address which was 
appreciated and will be long remembered. 

William Wirt Henry, a grandson of Patrick Henry, of whom 
Mr. Hoar justly speaks as one of the foremost lawyers and 
historians of the South, proposed this sentiment: 



18 A Memorial 

"Massachusetts and Virginia: 

Foremost in planting the English colonies in America; 

Foremost in resisting British tyranny; 

Foremost in the Revolution which won our independence and 
established our institutions: 

May the memories of the past be the bonds of the future." 

The memories of my own childhood days awaken as I come 
amongst the associations of this great day of Concord and 
Lexington. I see again the picture books, and I hear again the 
tales of the deeds that were done there in the awakening of the 
nation. I see your hamlets and towns, even as I saw them in 
childhood's fancy, overtopping, and outshining splendid vistas 
of stately cities, and I see again the farmer soldiers clothed with 
vestments that outdazzled the robes of kings. The hearts of my 
forefathers had been stirred by those scenes when they were fresh 
realities, nor were they slow to respond to them. Presently 
Morgan, with his march-stained riflemen from the right bank of 
the Potomac, filed into line upon the plains of Boston. Harry 
Lee marshaled there his Light Horse Troops. The frontier 
Indian fighter and planter from Mount Vernon took his place at 
the head of that army, which closed its work at Yorktown. A 
new Concord, a new Lexington, a new Boston and a new 
Bunker Hill sprung forth in Virginia, and the map of the colo- 
nies was soon a constellation of their names. Yes, peculiar 
ties, and sacred ties they are, that bind together Massachusetts 
and Virginia. 

These ties were welded in the battle fires that burned in the 
daybreak of hope of the "Old Colony" and of the "Old Domin- 
ion." Neither time nor difference of opinion, nor war, nor 
any deed or word of man, could or can unbind them. I feel this 
truth as I come amongst you, and, like you too, I love and ven- 
erate the memory of George Frisbie Hoar. I am proud as an 
American citizen that Massachusetts gave to my country such 
a Senator. I am grateful as a man that I possessed his noble 
friendship, and I deem it a privilege to bow in communion with 
you around these altars of "Patriots' Day," and to say with you: 
"Hosanna to the Highest!" rejoicing over the ever-living victory 
of Concord and Lexington, over the best of its perennial fruit- 



George Frisbie Hoar ig 

age, a free and self-respecting- people at peace with themselves, 
and over the stainless life of a brave and honest public servant 
crowned with honor. 

It is not my purpose to review the long and active career of 
Senator Hoar, nor to quote at all, unless in some passing allu- 
sion, the great questions of by-gone generations with which he 
was identified. They were inherited not only from our fore- 
fathers over the seas, but also from the long procession of cen- 
turies which precede them. They began in the tragedies of sav- 
agery and strife and despotism in the dark continent. They were 
perpetuated and transferred to us by the imperial systems of the 
old world without our consent, by systems indeed against which 
our very birth as a people was a protest. They were settled 
through tragedies here that darkened the morning light of the 
fresh young nation which was destined to achieve in God's 
Providence the greatest triumphs of human liberty that ever 
cheered the heart of man and to make this continent the foun- 
dation of the greatest structure of human rights that ever lifted 
its spires and domes to heaven. The settlement was conclusive. 
It rests on the common acceptation. None would reopen it. 
War destroyed its cause forever. All rejoice that it ended the 
only serious differences that ever existed among the different 
segments of the American people. While many problems arise 
before us and will continually arise anew, as our nation presses 
forward in its works of achievement, there is no one amongst us 
today that does not feel that our national life is dedicated to a 
high mission which will compass about far generations and dis- 
tant climes with its blessings, and assure to us and our descend- 
ants, the best gifts ever bestowed by our Creator on man accord- 
ing to our virtue and our wisdom. Let us leave, then, to history 
the things of difference which have passed away, and speak of 
those great qualities of Senator Hoar which made a deep 
impression upon all his countrymen, which will not pass away; 
but return to them all a generous heritage. He once said that 
" the bedrock of all of our institutions, political, moneyed and 
charitable, is personal character," and it was his personal char- 
acter which gave power for good to his genius and to his attain- 
ments. It won for him the respect and affections of men, and 



20 A Memorial 

opened the way for reconciliations, adjustments and achieve- 
ments which would have lingered and miscarried without it. 

A.ug. -'<), 1826, was the birthday of Senator Hoar, and the 30th 
of September, [904, was the date of his death. 

Between these dates that tell the tale of his well-nigh eighty 
years, this nation has grown from about twelve millions to nearly 
eighty millions in population, and the states have multiplied from 
twenty-one to forty-five. The whole railroad system of the United 
States had Keen created which now comprises over two hundred 
thousand miles of trackage, overspreading the continent, interlac- 
ing the states and linking- the oceans. Thousands of inventions 
have equipped and illumined the homes of the people with conven- 
iences and luxuries, and made them surpass the palaces of 
nobles "in the spacious days of Queen Elizabeth." The Mexican 
War had been fought, new commonwealths had been added on 
our southern frontier, and completed our boundaries to the 
Golden Gate. The prodigious Civil War, which carried to the 
field nearly three million soldiers, shook the continent, and at its 
close they vanished to their peaceful occupations. African slav- 
ery had been abolished, not only from our country, but as well 
in South America and in the West Indian Islands. The dread- 
ful aftermath of reconstruction had ended, and with universal 
acquiescence, the Union decreed by the fiat of war had become 
again the union of hearts and hands. The last remnant of 
Spanish imperialism had been swept away from the continent 
that Columbus discovered, and the ashes of the discoverer had 
been borne back to the kingdom that sent him forth. More 
senators who had been Confederate officials had occupied at one 
time seats in the Senate of the United States than there were 
seats to till in the Senate of the Southern Confederacy. Men who 
have met each other on the bloody fields of civil strife, again in 
honor preferring one another, touched elbows, and bore the 
Stars and Stripes in fraternal emulation from the hills of 
Santiago to the Philippine Islands and to the wall of Pekin. 
The Hawaiian Islands, two thousand miles distant from our 
shores; Porto Rico, in the Caribbean Sea. and the Philippine 
group in Asia, with from eight to twelve millions of souls, have- 
been added to our national dominion. The twentieth century 



George Frisbie Hoar 21 

had found the American republic in its prosperity, North, South, 
East and West attesting the greatest example of self-government 
that the world has ever witnessed, and yet stretching its mighty 
wings over distant countries and entering upon an imperial 
career — the outcome of which arouses the expectations of man- 
kind and strains the imagination. Our citizens, sprung from 
humble homes and avocations, had amassed fortunes that extin- 
guish the fame of Crcesus and made pale the myth of the Count 
of Monte Cristo. The marvels of science had outstripped the 
fancies of the Arabian Nights. Chartered commercial bodies 
have framed organizations more powerful than the combina- 
tions of cabinets or the conventions of kings; and as widespread 
in their influence as are the genius and enterprise of man. 

The life of this one man thus spanned a period of growth, 
expansion and progress, of his own country and of the world, 
which startles the mind when we contemplate its vastness, its 
triumphs and its swift strokes of redundant and consummating 
power. No such equal territory in the universe was ever before 
like America, the scene of such stupendous and such rapid evolu- 
tions of advancement. No five centuries of the previous history 
of mankind were so signalized by the masterful achievements of 
intellect, of moral and physical heroism, or of material progres- 
sions. 

This mighty period of striving and contention has closed in 
the "married calm of states." The Congress unanimously, and 
the President cordially, have returned to the Southern states every 
one of their flags which were captured in the Civil War, and in 
coming here at this time I have the double satisfaction of express- 
ing the gratitude of my people for this high act of national grace 
and magnanimity towards them, and of declaring my conviction 
that the great and good man whom we mourn did much by his 
wise and generous course to produce the possibility of this feat 
of peace and friendship. And I may say of him, and of my 
country" in the same breath, "Thy gentleness hath made thee 
great." 

As we look forth upon our multitudinous nation from the coign 
of vantage we have reached, we may rejoice that not one of the 
multitude feels that he is "a man without a country." There is 



A Memorial 

none who does not realize that through our conflict we have 
achieved greater respect and fresh friendship for each other; none 

who is ashamed of the past; none who fears the future: none who 
is not ready to give his life for his country. 

The unique distinction belongs to the American republic that 
with over a century of national life behind it, including the stu- 
pendous civil or sectional war, not a single life has been lost 
upon the scaffold or under the red hand of execution for political 
opinion's sake. America alone of all the great nations of his- 
tory can say this. There is the star of first magnitude on the 
forehead of liberty enlightening the world. 

There were men who in their day were greater factors in deal- 
ing with the issues of this now past epoch just before and during 
the Civil War and immediately afterwards, but there is no 
American citizen around whose name are entwined the memories 
of so long a part of that epoch as Senator Hoar. Were the polit- 
ical history of America written for that whole period, there is 
no man, living or dead, who would fill so large a space as he, no 
one who possesses a more honorable name. 

THE LAWYER. 

F( ir twenty years, from 1849 to 1869, Mr. Hoar practiced his pro- 
fession in this city, becoming counsel at one time or another for 
every 1 me 1 >f the fifty-two towns that compose the county. He was 
thrown in intimate relations with the thrifty farmers, ingenious 
mechanics, and distinguished inventors, as well as the able law r yers 
of this community, and he received in his professional career a 
practical as well as professional experience which admirably pre- 
pared him for the congressional digladiation to which he w as 
soon translated. 

To public affairs he was never indifferent. He presided at 
and addressed public meetings in advocacy of his party principles. 

He served for one year in each house of the Massachusetts Legis- 
lature. He twice declined the mayoralty of your city; and twice 
also the position of judge upon your supreme bench. Of your 
libraries, lyceums and institutions, and of all things that appeal 
to the public spirit, he was a constant and zealous advocate. 

He was a member of the Unitarian Church, of which the pres- 



George Frisbie Hoar 23 

ent chaplain of the Senate, his lifetime friend, the renowned cler- 
gyman, Edward Everett Hale, who opened this meeting- with 
prayer, was the pastor. 

He interwove himself into the affairs and affections of his peo- 
ple, and one could never think of Worcester without thinking - of 
him; nor of him without thinking of his beloved city. 

He recounts that at his admission to the bar, his highest am- 
bition was to become an office lawyer, and he supposed that he 
was without capacity for public speaking, and that his dream 
was to earn $1200 to $1500 a year, have a room in some quiet 
place, and earn enough to acquire rare books that could be had 
without much cost. 

He says of himself that he could honestly say with George 
Herbert: "I protest and I vow I even study thrift, and yet I 
am scarcely able with much ado to make one-half year's allow- 
ance shake hands with the other. And yet if a book for four or 
five shillings come in my way, I buy it, though, I fast for it, be 
it the sum of ten shillings." 

SENATE. 

After serving four terms in the House of Representatives, Mr. 
Hoar became a Senator on March 4, 1877. 

Of his career in the Senate, these things may be said: He was 
the most thoroughly equipped man in public life for the 
diversified duties of the senatorial office. His mind was imbued 
with the culture of the classics, as well as of the history and 
literature of the moderns, and he had wonderful power of apply- 
ing his rich stores of learning to current matters of discussion. 
No senator ever dedicated his abilities with more entire concen- 
tration to the discharge of the duties of the senatorial office. He 
had no look beyond the walls of the Senate for the preferments 
of executive favor, and he justly conceived that to discharge that 
office well, was consummation as of high and pure ambition as 
should fill the breast of an American statesman. Most justly 
he believed that no senator should permit himself to accept any 
executive appointment while yet a senator, however high or hon- 
orable it might be, and while he neither felt nor possessed invid- 
ious thought as to the distinguished men who have been senators, 



^4 A Memorial 

and at the same time executive ministers, commissioners or 
agents, he was thoroughly convinced and ably argued against 
any departure whatever from this principle. "No man can serve 
two masters." "Avoid the appearance of evil." In this great 
maxim, and in this wise admonition, both of which come from 
the Gospels, lay the philosophies of his doctrine, and they are 
si > intrenched in the wisdom and experience of mankind that 
they must inevitably become the doctrine of the body in which he 
both illustrated and enjoined it. Neither did Senator Hoar ever 
indulge any ambition for any office outside of the Senate. Twice 
was he offered the place of Ambassador to Great Britain, and 
once when a friend congratulated him upon this distinction, he 
replied: "That high and great as that office was, he regarded it 
as no promotion to a Senator of Massachusetts." 

His labors in the Senate were of the most diversified char- 
acter. He served on the committee on patents, on claims, revi- 
sion of laws, on the joint committee on the library, the commit- 
tee on woman's suffrage, the committee on rules, and on the 
committee on privileges and elections, the committee on claims 
against Nicaragua, and for twenty years he was on the commit- 
tee on the judiciary, and for eighteen years its chairman. In all 
these committees he made his mark, and there is no great sub- 
ject that was before Congress in his time upon which he did not 
make some important utterance. It is impracticable on this 
occasion to give even a summary of his legislative works. Many of 
them, toilsome and effective, were not such as go of record. 
But many passed into laws, and few men have left of record 
more indubitable marks of constructive ability. The Act for 
Counting the Electoral Vote; the Presidential Succession Act; the 
National Bankruptcy Act; the Act for the Settlement of South- 
ern Claims; the Bureau of Education Act. — these are some of 
the fruitions of his tireless energy and application to the public 
service. 

At an early day, when the feelings generated by the Civil War 
were but little liberalized, he advocated the just and wise policy 
of paying the damages inflicted by the war in the cases of insti- 
tutions of charity, education and religion. This was indeed in 
the Mouse of Representatives, before he came to the Senate, and 



George Frisbie Hoar 25 

while his political associates were in but little sympathy with 
him, and in that body he moved forward on lines of liberalism 
as far and as fast as he felt a just regard to all considered would 
permit. The old College of William and Mary, in Virginia, was 
the first recipient of the benefit of his doctrine, and it was his 
course on that subject which many years ago made for him a 
warm place in the respect and the good-will of the people of 
Virginia. 

Many who viewed the Capitol and its rich surroundings con- 
clude that the members of Congress are rich also. 

Once a Pennsylvania editor charged that Mr. Hoar lived on 
terrapin and champagne, had been an inveterate office-seeker all 
his life, and had never done a stroke of useful work. 

Instead of getting mad, Senator Hoar wrote a letter stating 
his small inheritance and possessions; how often he had refused 
office and never dishonored one; how he had gotten poorer and 
poorer year by year in Washington; that he had never been able 
to hire a house there; but experienced the varying fortune of 
Washington boarding-houses, and lived a good deal of the time 
in a fashion which no mechanic earning two dollars a day 
would subject his household. "The terrapin is all in my eye; 
fish-balls and coffee on Sunday morning are my chief luxury." 
But said he: "I have a dim glimpse of the beatific vision, and 
in that hour when the week begins, all the terrapin of Phila- 
delphia and Baltimore, and all the soft-shell crabs on the Atlantic 
shore, may pull at my trousers legs and thrust themselves on 
my notice in vain." 

Foremost among the problems of the new epoch is the prob- 
lem of the trusts and combinations, and the repression of the 
monopolies arising out of them. It is a notable fact that Senator 
Hoar was the author of the only remedy that has been devised 
by the Congress of the United States. His measure is misnamed 
the "Sherman Law," which it substituted, and as Senator Hoar 
facetiously says in his Autobiography: "It was so called for no 
other reason that I can think of except that Mr. Sherman had 
nothing to do with framing it whatever." This law was enacted 
in 1890. The courts have upheld it. It is applied in many and 
great causes, and it furnishes the stamen from which the new and 



26 A Memorial 

far-reaching legislation is likely to spring. The distinctive honor 
is Senator Hoar's, and he was the pioneer, the constructive 
statesman in this new field of our jurisprudence. 

THE PHILIPPINES. 

In his view against the annexation of the Philippine Islands to 
this country, I thoroughly concurred with Senator Hoar, and 
felt it my duty to make a speech in the Senate against the policy 
which reversed, as I thought, the principles and traditions of tin- 
republic. Some criticised Southern men for so doing, on the 
ground of their relations to the black people of the South. It 
was my knowledge of, and my experience with, an alien race in 
the South that all the more stimulated my opposition to com- 
plicating our republic in the affairs of a conglomerate and alien 
race of the Orient. Anxious as I was to support President 
Mckinley, for whom I not only entertained a high respect, but 
also the most cordial feeling of personal friendship, I could not 
believe it well to graft an Oriental empire on the American re- 
public. Besides, the fundamental doctrines of our Constitution 
and the teachings of the Fathers were in the way. The republic 
does not believe in the fruits that come under "conquest's crim- 
son wing." "This country," said Lincoln on the eve of the 
Civil War, "cannot remain half free and half slave." Xo nation 
can remain long half republic and half empire. 

I had no little gratification in listening to and reading the 
speeches of Senator Hoar on the subject. They were of the 
quality not inferior to those of Edmund Burke. They marked 
the perihelion of this great career which was predicated from 
first to last on his convictions of fundamental right. 'I hat, as he 
conceived it, he would not abandon even though the party whose 
cradle he had rocked and whose career he had fostered bade him 
do so. Nay, not even though the voice of his beloved Mas- 
sachusetts no longer reinforced him and cheered him on. Most 
honorable was his high and independent course on this subject: 
and honorable indeed was it to Massachusetts that, though 
differing with him, she re-elected him to the Senate and showed 
her abiding love and veneration for a man of pure heart and of 
char conviction who would not stoop to conquer. 



George Frisbie Hoar 27 

Let it not be fancied that I am criticising those who either 
differed with Senator Hoar or myself; this is no time or place 
for that. Strong- as my convictions were and are on this subject, 
I recognize the complicated conditions with which we have had 
to deal. I do not distrust the patriotic purpose of those who 
differ with me and I am no harsh judge of my fellow men. 
Some have thought that your junior Senator, who was at vari- 
ance with his colleague on this topic, should in his chaste and 
able address on Senator Hoar have given to Senator Hoar the 
praise for his course which so many have lavished upon him. 
With all respect, permit me to say that I cannot concur in these 
views, and I can only hope that my own reference to a topic 
upon which so many of you are divided will be recognized to be 
entirely without invidiousness and that this brief history is only 
related to give the prominence which it deserves to the exalted 
and unselfish character of the great exponent of a great principle. 

ORATOR AND DEBATER. 

That Mr. Hoar was a great orator and debater is as well 
known as any fact in the history of the Congress. He seemed 
always ready. His speeches on sudden occasions were often as 
rich with information and with illustration as those composed 
with all the adjuncts of deliberation and reflection. He never 
failed to command attention, for he always concentrated his 
arguments and appeals upon the crucial points and seldom 
ranged into discursions. When he spoke upon great principles 
which were imbedded in his convictions, the very fire of his soul 
poured forth in glowing eloquence or in stern and keen invective. 
No matter what was the theme or humor of the discussion, the 
keynote of his invocation was always pitched in tune with the 
highest and best sensibilities of human nature. We have heard of 
men being warned not to speak above their audience. Happy is 
he who can speak up to the level of his audience. Senator Hoar 
always spoke with upturned countenance, as if the sentiments he 
uttered were themselves of such a nature as to elevate both au- 
dience and orator to a high plane. 

A subtle wit, a delicious sense of humor, an exquisite taste, 



28 A Memorial 



and the delicacies of literary embellishment, were apt to display 
themselves in his discourses; and when he delivered orations or 
lectures before select audiences on particular subjects, he was 
sure to produce a contribution to their literature, which brought 
together the richest fruits, of history, poesy, philosophy, research 
and reflection. It is to be hoped and believed that his numerous 
addresses of this character will be collected and published, and 
until that is done there will remain a vacuum in the libraries 
that contain the works of Webster, of Choate, of Everett, 
Winthrop and Sumner, which cannot be filled until those of 
George Frisbie Hoar are added. "Sir," said Lamar to one who 
was discussing Senator Hoar a quarter of a century ago, "Mas- 
sachusetts has never been more powerfully represented in the 
Senate, not even in the time of Daniel Webster, than by Mr. 
Hoar." Xor will she be better represented than by him when 
his addresses take their place in that great company. 

"The orator of to-day," said Mr. Hoar in a speech he made 
two years ago in Chicago, "puts his emphasis on glory, on 
empire, on power, on wealth." There is no speech of Mr. Hoar 
that I have ever heard, and none of his that I have ever read, 
that puts its emphasis on any of them. 

There are indeed four mighty pillars of national power and 
prestige, but the eternal laws of moral gravity which made him 
say that "Justice, Veracity. Unselfishness, Character, lay at the 
foundation of all national and all individual greatness;" on these 
we have foundations on which all the pillars rest with the lights 
of Heaven in the canopy above them. 

Some one asked Senator Hoar how to study oratory. He 
answered: "Read the Greek orations." 

If you will read after Senator Hoar you will see that he had 
read them, chewed them, and digested them. 

' )ne great speech of his let me quote. It was on the death of 
President McKinley. It deserves to live forever and it will live 
forever. It is the spirit of true Americanism in noblest expres- 
sion. 

(i) "You and I are Republicans. You and I are men of the 
North. Most of us are Protestant in religion. We are men of 
native birth. 



George Frisbie Hoar 29 

"Yet, if every Republican were to-day to fall in his place as 
William McKinley has fallen, I believe our countrymen of the 
other party, in spite of what we deem their errors, would take 
the republic and bear on the flag to liberty and to glory." 

There are patriotism, liberality and magnanimity. 

(2) "I believe that if every Protestant were to be stricken 
down by a lightning stroke, our brethren of the Catholic 
faith would still carry on the republic in the spirit of a true and 
liberal freedom." 

There is broad and just and Catholic religious freedom and faith. 

(3) "I believe that if every man of native birth within our 
borders were to die to-day, the men of foreign birth who have 
come here to seek homes and liberty under the shadow of the 
republic, would carry it on in God's appointed way." 

There is the right hand of friendship, hospitality and trust to 
those who come hither from beyond the seas. 

(4) "I believe that if every man of the North were to die, 
the new and chastened South, with the virtues it has cherished 
from the beginning of love of home and of love of state, and 
love of freedom, with its courage and its constancy, would take 
the country and bear it on to the achievement of its lofty des- 
tiny. The anarchist must slay 75,000,000 Americans before he 
can slay the republic." 

There shines the upright form of the American. 

(5) "William McKinley has fallen from his high place. The 
spirit of anarchy, always the servant of the spirit of despotism, 
aimed his shaft at him and his life for this world was over. But 
there comes from his fresh grave a voice of lofty triumph: 'Be of 
good cheer. It is God's way.' " 

There is the Christian spirit. 

"Thy will be done." "Thy Kingdom come." The Lord's 
Prayer. 

He was a man of large and varied capacities: both solid and 
brilliant. He possessed intense and refined feelings. He was a 
devoted student, and he drank deeply of the Pierian spring. He 
loved books and all the associations of letters. He held con- 
stant communications with the mighty spirits and sages of the 
past; and to him they still moved and lived and had their being 



30 A Memorial 

in the majesty of high thoughts, and in the glory of great deeds. 
His sympathies were co-extensive with humanity. His individ- 
uality was as distinct as a separate star. His temperament and 
imagination were those of the poet. He had the mingled enthu- 
siasm of the artist, the scholar, of the reformer, of the moral 
propagandist, and they realized his principles. Men of this 
temperament and of this quality may sometimes overlook the 
nature of material in which they work, and the leader in his en- 
thusiasm may advance beyond the capacity of the blind to follow. 

I would not desecrate this occasion by any uncandid thought. 
He was a manly man, one who always stood up to be counted, 
and it is due to the manly spirit that I should say that, from my 
standpoint, Senator Hoar made mistakes of this character. "He 
who has nOt made mistakes," said Marshal Turenne, "has not 
made war." We might extend the maxim and declare that he 
who has not made mistakes has not made anything. Whatever 
mistakes a man of the spirit, character and calibre of Senator 
Hoar might make from the standpoint of some contemplations, 
it is to me a self-evident fact that his many magnificent strokes 
of patriotic and humane achievement were admirable from all 
standpoints of contemplation. He pushed always to the front 
of the battle with such splendid valor of conviction and such 
purity of purpose that he won the hearts of those who differed 
with him as well as those who coincided with him, He was a 
hero worshipper, and a hero himself, and like Martin Luther, he 
would not have turned back from the mission of his conscience 
though devils from the house-tops scowled upon him. 

He was an optimist, feeding his faith on the evidences of things 
unseen, and comforting his spirit with the substance of things 
hoped fur. 1 1 is high hopes were not the mere emotions of a 
sanguine temperament, they were the result of his moral instincts 
and of his intellectual convictions. 

I'.rice, the author of the American Commonwealth, says: 
"That America is the country where things turn out better than 
they ought to." Mr. Hoar always thought that things ought to 
turn out all right, and that therefore they were obliged to and 
would turn out all right. 

"God is in His heaven; all's right with world." 



George Frisbie Hoar 31 

No winter of discontent was so bleak and barren that through 
its chill he did not feel the sunshine and hear the song-birds of 
the spring - that would be. 

A lady of my state and her daughter once looked upon the 
Senate. When they returned home, each with the same breath 
said: "We like Senator Hoar's face; it is full of sunshine and 
benevolence." He was as he looked; and I use the language he 
applied to Edward Everett Hale: "A prophet of good hope and 
a preacher of good cheer," and he said of himself: "The lesson 
which I have learned in life and which is impressed on me more 
and more daily as I grow old is the lesson of good-will and good 
hope." "I believe that to-day is better than yesterday, and that 
to-morrow will be better than to-day." 

He felt that truth so exquisitely expressed by the Laureate of 
England: 

"I doubt not through the ages an unceasing purpose runs, 
And the thoughts of men are ripened with the process of the suns." 

He regarded Thomas Jefferson as the foremost man that ever 
lived, whose influence has led men to govern themselves in the 
conduct of states by spiritual laws. This to my mind was the 
leading characteristic of Senator Hoar, and there was an eleva- 
tion and spirituality in his teachings generous and unrelenting 
which surpassed that of any public character of his day and gen- 
eration. His high ideal of this nation was that of "a great and 
free people, voluntarily governing itself by a law higher than its 
own desire;" and it is a greater, a better, and a freer peo- 
ple that he lived and served it. 

The influence of his life and character dies not with him. His 
spirit will hover over you and will suffuse itself into the thoughts 
and the hearts and the doings of the men and women of Massa- 
chusetts for years and years to come. Nor here alone will it be 
potent. It has overspread the nation. It has gone to the 
uttermost parts of the earth. Everywhere it will remain a force 
for the uplifting of mankind. The rains descend; but who can 
tell what valleys the mountain rivulet will fertilize? The sun- 
shine glorifies the hill, the field and the valley, but who can tell 
where will spring the flowers that will suck in the sweetness of 



32 A Memorial 

light and gather their colors from its beams? The storm-winds 
scatter the seeds of tree, and grass, and flower; but who may 
know where they will clothe the earth with verdure, or where 
the forest and the orchard grow"" 

He was a worshipful man, full of reverence; his religion was 
the key of the morning and the bolt of the night. What are the 
wages of this man's life, so laborious, so dutiful ? 

Not riches — as the counting-room may compute them. Not 
wages worthy of his hire. Greater confines of blessedness were 
his. Wife, children and friends. The praise of confidence in- 
spired, and reverence achieved from minds opposed. The suffrage 
from year to year, and from generation to generation of a devoted 
constituency. A home beautiful in its modest simplicity, the nest 
which he had builded, in which he nurtured alike the beings of 
his love and the great dream of his humanity. 

And old age serene and bright, 
And lovely as an Arctic night. 

A high place in the nation's life and in its counsels and a life 
assured in "a people's voice, the proof and echo of all human 
fame." His soul thirsted as every great soul must thirst; his 
spirit reached forth as every fine spirit must reach, for some- 
thing more than all these things — many and great and dear and 
cherished as they were. To him it was not all of life to live, 
nor all of death to die. Passing forms of existence were not 
to him processions to the dust. He believed in the immortality 
of the soul. 

The immortality of the soul was to him a conscious reality- 
He believed with Plato "that no man can be a true worshipper 
of the gods that does not know that the soul is immortal." He 
felt that this faith and this hope was "the inspiration of all patriot- 
ism, the stimulant to all heroism, the fountain of all love and the 
consoler in all sorrow." He could "see no reason why He who 
created it could not satisfy it." "He who makes the ear, shall 
he not hear?" "I [e who makes the eye, shall he not see?" He 
who inspired thi> faith, shall he not fulfill it? 



George Frisbie Hoar 



33 



"Glory of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song, 

Paid with a voice flying to be lost in an endless sea. 
Glory of virtue, to fight, to struggle, to right the wrong. 

Nay, she smiled not at glory, no lover of glory she; 

Give her the glory of going on, and still to be." 

"The wages of sin is death; if the wages of virtue be dust, 
Would she have the heart to endure for the life of the worm and the fly? 

She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet sea of the just, 
To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a summer sky. 
Give her the wages of going on and not to die." 



EetuWcttou t>» Met). fSfrtoar* fStoetrett ©alt 

May the very peace which passeth all understanding - , and may 
the love of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and the fellow- 
ship and companionship of the most Holy Spirit of all Truth be 
with us all forever. Amen. 



34 A Memorial 



Cfti> of ^Worcester. 

jLiCSOluCZn That the City of Worcester expresses its pro- 
found appreciation and deep gratitude for the discriminat- 
ing, adequate and eloquent eulogy pronounced upon the late 
George Frisbie Hoar, in Mechanics Hall, on Patriots' Day, 
by John \V. Daniel, a Senator of the United States from the 
State of Virginia. It was in every respect worthy of the 
occasion and of the most distinguished and honored citizen 
Worcester has ever had. Coming after the first grief, for 
our great loss has been softened by time, this oration will 
be a renewed inspiration to high ideals of citizenship and 
patriotic attainment. The tribute from this eminent son of 
Virginia voiced with strong emphasis and peculiar charm 
the sentiments of loyal affection and reverent respect of the 
people of Worcester. 

And that the Clerk be authorized to send a copy of this 
resolution to Senator Daniel. 

In Board of Aldermi-:.\, 
April 24, 1905. 

Passed under a suspension of the rules. Sent down for con- 
currence. 

Theodore H. Day, 

President. 

Ix Common Council. 
April 24, 1905. 

D. E. Denny, 

President. 



Concurred. 



Approved, April 26, 1905. 

Walter H. Blodget, 

Mayor. 

A Copy. Attest: E. H. Towm. 

City Clerk. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



013 785 519 7, 



